ALMOST READY

My butt is as flat as a road-killed possum. The sport show season is over for me after attending the Cabela’s Captains Weekend at their Hammond, Indiana show. That’s a lot of sitting on a relatively uncomfortable stool for hours on end!

Actually, I enjoy the shows. They are not my most productive way of selling fishing trips on the Brother Nature, but there’s a steady parade of old friends and fellow fishermen stopping by my station–all with cabin fever as bad as I have. It’s good to see them and talk fishing. I didn’t keep a strict tally, but I’d estimate over the weekend the discussions at my table involved the harvest of several thousand salmon, a few mahi-mahi and amberjack, more than a few walleyes and a good number of ducks, deer, geese and turkeys.

Between the early calls coming from past customers, people finding me in other ways and the phone ringing after the show weekends, I’ve got a healthy number of trips lined up right on through the spring. There are plenty of weekday openings left and some weekends (mostly Sundays.) Give me a call and we’ll get you set up!

In the past week the ice in the marinas has broken and melted so the lake is open and apparently the pack-ice on the main lake has disappeared, as well. A very few boats have squeezed in some early action and have had a bit of success on cohos and brown trout. The water is still very cold and the fish concentrated in the warm water discharge areas. It’s also quite dirty looking which is a good thing.

That dirty water is what the sun works on and heats more rapidly than clear, clean water. The salmon would rather be in the warm water than the clear, offshore cold water so they swarm to the shallows. Things will break loose in the next week or so and the spring fishing excitement will be going full force!